Intelligent Game Loading

• US 20120004042A1
• Filed: 09/13/2011
• Published: 01/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/15/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Perry, David, Pereira, Rui Filipe Andrade
• Granted Patent: US 8,613,673 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 463/42
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/30 Interconnection arrangements between game servers and game devices; Interconnection arrangements between game devices; Interconnection arrangements between game servers
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/355 Performing operations on behalf of clients with restricted processing capabilities, e.g. servers transform changing game scene into an encoded video stream for transmitting to a mobile phone or a thin client
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/358 Adapting the game course according to the network or server load, e.g. for reducing latency due to different connection speeds between clients
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/70 Game security or game management aspects
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/77 involving data related to game devices or game servers, e.g. configuration data, software version or amount of memory
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/534 for network load management, e.g. bandwidth optimization, latency reduction

Abstract

A computing system is configured to execute a computer program on a server and to provide a video stream of the program output to a geographically remote client over a communication network. The computing system is further configured to provide executable content of the computer program to the client over the communication network in parallel with the video stream. When a sufficient amount of the executable content has been provided to the client execution of the computer program is transitioned from the server to the client. The transition optionally includes communicating a state of the computer program from the server to the client. The executable content can be provided to the client in an order that is determined based on the state of the computer program. Those parts of the executable content deemed most likely to be necessary to support game play on the client are given priority.

Claims

1. A game system comprising:

a video source configured to provide a streaming video to a first client geographically remote from the video source, the streaming video being generated at the video source responsive to a present state of a computer program; and

a download manager configured to dynamically determine, responsive to the present state of the computer program, a download sequence of a plurality of parts of an executable content of the computer program, and

download parts of the executable content according to the download sequence, from a code source to the first client via a network, while the streaming video is being provided to the first client from the video source.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the video source is configured to produce the streaming video using a graphic processing unit.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the present state of the computer program is dependent on commands received from the first client and/or from a second client.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computer program is a computer game and the streaming video is rendered at the video source from a three dimensional game environment.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the download manager is configured to give greater priority to providing the streaming video to the first client relative to providing the executable content to the first client.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the download manager is configured change a characteristic of the streaming video so that a rate at which the streaming video is downloaded is reduced, when there is a significant probability that a part of the executable content will be needed on the first client before it is downloaded to the first client.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the changed characteristic of the streaming video is a frame rate, or where the significant probability is greater than 1, 2 or 5 percent.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the download manager is configured to provide the executable content at a bit rate that is dependent on a bandwidth of a communication channel between the code source and the first client.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the bit rate is also dependent on a bit rate at which the streaming video is provided.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the download manager is configured to download the executable content to the first client at a rate that is limited by a rate at which the streaming video is provided to meet a minimum acceptable quality of the streaming video as displayed on the first client.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the video source includes the download manager.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the download manager is configured to dynamically modify the download sequence based on a determination of the probabilities of other states of the computer program being reached from a current state of the computer program, and knowledge of which resources will be required in those other states.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the dynamic modification of the download sequence can occur in either the server side mode or the client side mode.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising a computer-readable medium, storing a probability tree database, and in communication with the download manager, wherein the download manager is further configured to determine the probabilities of other states of the computer program based on the current state of the computer program by querying the probability tree database.

15. The system of claim 14 further comprising a statistics engine configured to maintain the probability tree database.

16. The system of claim 1, where in a frame of the streaming video and part of the executable content are downloaded to the first client in a same data packet.

17. A method of providing a computer game, the method comprising:

executing game logic on a video server in a server side mode of game execution to render a video stream based on a game state;

providing the video stream from the video server to a client over a communication network;

dynamically determining, responsive to the game state, a download sequence of a plurality of parts of an executable game code, the executable game code being configured to generate video based on the game state; and

providing the parts of the executable game code to the client in parallel with the video stream according to the download sequence.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein dynamically determining the download sequence includes querying a probability tree database.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising calculating a download rate for providing the parts of the executable game code to the client, the calculation being dependent on a rate at which the video stream is provided to the client.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein calculating the download rate includes monitoring a bandwidth of a communication channel to the client.

21. The method of claim 17, further comprising initiating a transition from the server side mode of game execution to a client side mode of game execution in which game logic is executed on the client to render the video stream based on the game state.

22. The method of claim 17, further comprising providing the parts of the executable game code to the client after initiating the transition.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein providing the parts of the executable game code to the client after initiating the transition is performed according to the download sequence.

24. The method of claim 17, further comprising, after initiating the transition, dynamically determining the download sequence responsive to the game state.